Using the graphical schedule

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This page refers to Portfolio classic plans. If you are currently running Portfolio 2.0, please check this link to access the latest page version.

The graphical schedule shows the results of the resource calculation and forecasting based on your data. It provides visibility into forecasted release dates, timing, teams, and members. The epics and the stories are scheduled, as well as details on capacity utilization and bottlenecks.

How to configure the graphic schedule views

  1. Choose your plan and go to either backlog, people, or releases view.
  2. In the lower side of the screen, you will see the graphic schedule. If you can't see the schedule, click SCHEDULE at the bottom of the screen. You can view the graphic line from the backlog, people, and releases view.

  3. Select the schedule view you want to use by clicking the icons or open the schedule settings to refine the granularity level of the views.

Graphic schedule views

Compact view

Use the compact view if you need space to work with the backlog data, and just want to see projected release dates. In this view mode you can see the following elements:

  • The start date of the first release for which items are scheduled 
    For example: if there are two releases, but no item has been assigned for the first release, the timeline will start with the start date of the second release.
  • Now/Today is indicated with a dashed orange line marker in case it is between the start and end date
  • Time markers for each release
  • Time markers for forecasted end dates (in case they are different than the configured release dates)

Here's an example for how the timeline looks like in case of a fixed end date release, and still some buffer between the forecasted completion and the release date: 

  1. Forecasted completion date
  2. Buffer
  3. Fixed release date
    If you hover the mouse over any of the time markers or anywhere along the timeline, you'll see a label indicating the exact date.

    If the release is overbooked, it will be indicated in red, also highlighting the delay period. 

 

 

 

Release view

 

The release view provides you with a compact summary of releases and iterations for teams using a Scrum schedule. It can be filtered by release stream or by sprint, and displays the following information depending on the granularity level that you select:

Releases

  • Release name, date and type
  • Planned Capacity: total number of days, hours or story points that are planned for a release. Check out your planning unit in your settings.

Sprints - Only available for teams working on an iteration-based schedule. 

  • Sprint name and date
  • Planned capacity: total number of days, hours or story points, which are planned for a release. See settings.
  • Free capacity: total number of days, hours or story points that would still be available during the release period, if all resources could be booked up to 100%

 

 

 

Epics view

The epics view provides a graphical timeline showing high-level features start and completion schedule.

The epics view can be grouped at different granularity levels: 

  • All items
  • Per team
  • Per member
  • Global (all items)

The "All items" view shows one bar per epic, across all teams and team members. The bar starts when the first person is scheduled to start working on an item and ends when the last piece of work is completed.

If the epic links to one or multiple issues in a Jira application, and time is logged on either epics, child stories or their subtasks, the time spent is displayed in the graphic.

Colors

Green bar: time spent is lower than the estimate

Red bar: time spent is superior to the estimate

Purple bar: indicates the absence of team members. You can configure this option in the section Managing your team's availability.

Per team

The epics view per team shows swim lanes for each team. If multiple teams work on an epic, the epic is represented several times in the view. 

The number next to the team name is the number of epics assigned to this team. 

Per member

This view shows swimlanes for each team member, alongside with the team the member works for, and the the number of assigned items. 

In this view, team's members can show up multiple times if they are assigned to multiple teams.

For example: a member could work 20 hours a week in team A, and 20 hours in team B. This would result in two swimlanes in this view, so that the work for the teams can still be separated.

 

 

 

Initiatives view

The initiatives view provides a graphical timeline showing at which times high-level features/feature groups are scheduled to start and to be completed. 

The epics view can be grouped at different granularity levels: 

  • All items
  • Per team
  • Per member
  • Global (all items)

The "All items" view shows one bar per epic, across all teams and team members. The bar starts when the first person is scheduled to start working on an item and ends when the last piece of work is completed. 

If the epic links to one or multiple issues in a Jira application (see Creating and linking issues), and time is logged on either the epics, child stories or their sub-tasks, this time spent can be displayed in the graphical schedule as well. 

It is depicted as a red or green "progress" bar, green if the time spent is lower than the estimate, red if more time has been spent than actually estimated for the item. 

Per team

The epics view per team shows swim lanes for each team. If multiple teams work on an epic, the epic is represented several times in the view. 

The number next to the team name is the number of epics assigned to this team. 

Per member

This view shows swim lanes for each team member, alongside with the team the member works for, and the the number of assigned items. 

Note: In this view, it is possible that individual people show up multiple times. This happens in case they are assigned to multiple teams. For instance, a member could work 20 hours a week in team A, and 20 hours in team B. This would result in two swimlanes in this view, so that the work for the teams can still be separated.

 

 

 

Stories view

The stories view provides the most detailed graphical schedule. It shows individual stories and their stages of work. The view takes the configurable color coding of the stages . in the example below, design (story writing) is green, implementation is blue. 

Global

The global view shows stories categorized in sprints, across all teams. It is available in the following cases: 

  • All teams work in Scrum mode
  • All teams have the same sprint length

In other cases, only the views per team and per member are available. 

Per team (Scrum)

This view creates a swim lane per team and shows the team's sprints, as well as the stories scheduled for each of the sprints. 

Per team (Kanban)

Based on the different scheduling logic in Kanban mode), the view plots the stories on a day-granularity timeline. 

Info: Day granularity means that the smallest unit of time that is still represented in the schedule is a day. The capacity calculation is of course based on hours or even minutes. However, if a person would work for half a day on an item, and for the second half of the day on a second item, this would be displayed as an overlap in the schedule, since there is work scheduled for both on the same day.

Per member

Following the same concepts as in the epics view, stories can be plotted per member. Additionally, the members view shows planned absences or limited presences of people graphically in the timeline. 

Dependencies

Dependencies can be displayed in the graphical schedule when you are in initiative, epic or story view by selecting Dependencies in view settings.  When an item has a dependency the end of the bar in the schedule is highlighted indicating that their is a dependency. If an item requires another item to be finished before it can be started the highlight will appear at the beginning of the bar, and if there are outgoing dependencies those are highlighted at the end of the bar.

Selecting the highlight on the bar will show the item that requires or is required by the selected item. Switch dependency view "off" to make viewing and printing the graphical schedule easier. 

  • The start date of the first release for which items are scheduled (i.e., if there are two releases, but no item has been assigned for the first release, the timeline will start with the start date of the second release)
  • Now/Today is indicated with a dashed orange line marker in case it is between the start and end date
  • Time markers for each release
  • Time markers for forecasted end dates (in case they are different than the configured release dates)

 

 

 

Capacity view

The capacity view provides a graphical time line showing capacity that is planned or booked as well as resource utilization. When working with scrum teams capacity is displayed as story points and when working with kanban teams, capacity is plotted using calendar weeks. 

The capacity view can be grouped at different granularity levels by selecting Configure Schedule icon and allows you to filter the view based on the following: 

  • None -  displays all of the groupings (teams and members)
  • Per team - shows the capacity broken up by team
  • Per member - shows the capacity broken up by team member 
  • Global - Shows all items in the schedule regardless of what release it is in. 
  • Release streams - Shows the capacity broken up by release. In this view, only the planned capacity is shown, free capacity and overload are not displayed as this information is ambiguous when looking at parallel releases. Free capacity is available to all parallel releases potentially, so it can't be allocated to a particular stream.

Global summaries

You can display a global summary of a selected rows in the graphical schedule that shows the total capacity for the options you have configured (none, teams, members, global, and streams).  

Example: Filter to a specific release in the backlog and configure the graphical schedule to display members to get a summary of the capacity of each team member for a particular a release. 

To view a global summary select  next to the row you wish to see. 

In addition, the resource utilization for each iteration is displayed with detailed information when you select an individual interaction and contains the following: 

    • Overload: the number of days/hours/ story points is shown which would not fit into the release and will be worked on after the targeted release date in the current plan. 
    • Planned capacity: The total number of day, hours or stories (depending on your planning unit, see Settings) which are planned for a release.
    • Capacity utilization: Total percentage of available time (across all people in the plan) that is currently utilized. Please note that since this is a total value, it might well be that certain people are booked 100%, while others have a lower usage. 
    • Bottlenecks:  Shows any bottlenecks based on items that will not fit into a sprint. 
Last modified on Feb 7, 2019

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